Today we took a trip up to the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico. The museum is fairly new, only a couple of years old, but I had never been to it, even though I see it plenty of times driving up 95 in Virginia. The museum was actually really nice. It looks really cool on the outside (especially at night) and the exhibits inside were really well done. There is also a good outdoor walk that is really nice to take which takes you around the museum and up to the chapel. Here is the front entrance of the museum with the "Iron Mike" statue standing guard. Not sure who Iron Mike is, but he seems like a pretty cool guy.
This is right outside the chapel, where we were able to find my Dad's brick along the walk. You can purchase a dedicated brick with a donation that is laid along the path around the grounds of the museum, and a couple years back when the museum was being built, we got one for my Dad. The placement of the brick was perfect, it was close to the chapel with a great view from the other side of the actual museum at the bottom.
While walking through the exhibits inside the actual museum, we were very pleasantly surprised to find this photo on one of the walls that was part of a more modern exhibit. This is a photo of a CH-46 flying a mission in Kuwait back on Christmas Day in 1998. You may wonder how I know that the photo was actually taken in Kuwait when the text of the exhibit only mentions that the operation was in Iraq. That's because the pilot of that helicopter is none other than my Dad! He was deployed to Iraq/Kuwait in '98 when we were living in Okinawa, Japan. This was always a really cool photo that we had that was taken of one of his flights while he was away, which we also have on display at our house. It was really cool to see it on display at the actual museum in Quantico today. Now he will always be a part of our national history preserved on display forever!
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